Sylvia's Journal

Because of Axel’s absence the US government is getting more bang for its buck. I worked on various tasks that fall by the wayside during the workweek completing at least a half day of work on this second day of my weekend.

I spent considerable time on the performance review process. I sweated over the evaluations of some of my staff. What to do with positive self evaluations when you don’t agree? If you take this annual ritual serious (I do), doing it well is very complex. You have to think, weigh, balance and try to remember the entire year, not just a few high or low points. You have to imagine how what you say will be interpreted; whether it will trigger defense reactions and how to handle those.

Part of me says ‘hey, why complicate things, just agree with everything and give the score that states all objectives were satisfactorily achieved.’ Many people here do that, or even give a superior rating. People will like you for it and you don’t have to have any difficult conversations. And so the other part of me says, ‘well, if you are not honest what message are you giving?’ I tend to listen to the latter voice. And so I sweat. I must have spent at least 8 hours over the last week just on these performance reviews and I am not done yet. Luckily I have only 4 people reporting to me.

And then there is the procurement integrity course we have to take online each year. It takes about 90 minutes according to the instructions. I thought I would do it faster than that – I read fast and take tests easily; at that pace it took 90 minutes. I wonder how long it would take for my Afghan colleagues. Some test questions are complex, representing ambiguous scenarios.

I had two wrong answers of the 50 or so questions, so I passed and am good for another year. I have taken the test several times now and am quite familiar with the content. I love the section about why it is not good to give jobs to relatives. All possible kinds of relatives were named, including ancestors. According to the rules you are not supposed to procure jobs for your ancestors.

In the afternoon I was once again the only student in my weekly Dari grammar class which started with four people back in March. It seems I am the lone survivor. I like it because it means I now have a two hour private lesson from the head teacher and can focus on whatever I want.

Today the teacher helped me write a note in Dari to ‘my esteemed cook’ Amin jan in which I explained that I don’t want him to cook the kind of meals he has cooked so far for us before because I can’t handle that volume now that Axel has left. In my best Dari I asked him to prepare two small salads each day for my dinner: a green/veggie salad and a fruit salad, explaining that I have a solid lunch at the office and am not very hungry when I come home so as not to create any bad feelings about the quality of his cooking.

For dinner I went with a friend to the Gandamack guesthouse where Axel has wanted to go for so long and never went. We sat on a lovely veranda surrounded by grapevines and roses and could imagine we were somewhere in Italy or Spain. One look at the menu (Sheppard Pie or Steak and Kidney Pie) though makes you think that you are in Britain. And then, when you look past the roses and beyond the neat green lawn you see the sandbags and security guards with guns – and you know that you are in Kabul. And finally, when the espresso is served in the little six (eight?) sided stove top espresso maker you are back in Italy.